America's black president
A friend spoke with me about the oft-repeated concept of a "post-racial" America, writes Baratunde Thurston. The notion is that we will have won the War On Racism by electing Obama and once and for all healed America's racial divide. Claims of employment discrimination, systematic imprisonment and economic segregation could be met with, "But you have a black president." In fact, Obama's mere candidacy (and the reaction of his opponents to it) has exacerbated that racial divide in small but poignant ways. News organisations have scrambled to display their understanding of blackness but often showcase massive ignorance instead. Fox News refers to Michelle as Obama's "baby mama". CNN tries to summarise all of Black America in a two-part series almost exclusively highlighting pain, struggle and failures. Baratunde Thurston The Independent
Full article: Obama has tapped into hope – and triggered a backlash of fear 
Alexander Cockburn: Republicans get ready for the political wilderness
This campaign has not fundamentally been about race at all. Don't get this wrong, says Martin Kettle. The Republicans are engaged in an "othering" of Obama into which race is inextricably woven. But the othering of 2008 is not something new and unique but something old and familiar. In 2004 they othered John Kerry as a rich liberal. In 2000 they othered Al Gore as a beltway geek. In the 1990s they othered Bill Clinton as a draft-dodging child of the 60s. But this othering is more diabolically potent this time because it's about race, right? No, actually, that's wrong. The assumption that an inner racist demon lurks latent and uncontrollable in the souls of all white Americans, waiting to jump to the Republican dog whistle, is simply untrue. Martin Kettle The Guardian
Full article: All this inner racist demon stuff is wildly overblown
Airtime: CNN gives Obama top Marx as madness spreads
How far is too far?
What the millions are really complaining about is Brand's success with women, and Ross's extraordinary salary, writes Adrian Edmondson. They're fed up with how good Brand looks in his skinny jeans with his crazy hair, how his life seems such effortless good fun, a whirlwind of humour and debauchery. And I don't know anyone who isn't incredibly jealous of Ross's £6m a year. The noise about BBC editorial procedure is a smokescreen, but a dangerous one. Once we start passing all jokes through endless "taste" controls we'll cripple people's ability to make jokes. If we'd had the kind of controls people are talking about implementing we might end up in some kind of puritanical Britain where they start putting underpants on church spires because they look a bit phallic. Adrian Edmondson The Independent
Full article: Is that a joke in bad taste? You'd better watch out...
People: What the BBC ban means for Jonathan Ross
Once upon a time, I reckon, there was a great gulf in this country between public humour and private humour. Public humour is the stuff that you get in newspapers. Maybe on Radio 4. Private humour, that's more vicious. It's the way you talk in the pub. It's the 'oh my God, I can't believe you shagged her' sort of humour. We all do it, or most of us do, but we wouldn't want to explain it to our grandparents. They wouldn't get it. They'd think we were scum. Recently, maybe in the past 20 years, the one has bled into the other. That's why some things are 'edgy'; because they sneak vicious, irony-laden private humour out into the public sphere. Little Britain, The Office, Mock the Week, all that. Hugo Rifkind The Times
Full article: A joke's a joke, but leave grandad out of it
How do you stop a star?
Ferocious competition in the new media market has exacerbated the power gulf between editorial and talent, says Jenni Russell. Someone like Ross knows he's bigger than a programme, or even a channel. His salary makes that clear. How easy is it for a minion on £25,000 or so, or an executive on £80,000, to say no to him? The editorial teams who actually make decisions day to day are being landed with a nearly impossible task. They are urged to grab audiences, get out there, take the risks. Remote senior managers draw up general guidelines that don't cover the painful business of drawing lines every day. When Ross asked David Cameron if he'd had teenage sexual fantasies about Thatcher, there was no BBC censure. Jenni Russell The Guardian
Full article: Killed by the radio star
in brief:
Working for free
Have you tears to spare? If so, shed them now for the hapless partners in Goldman Sachs, the giant international bank. This year, its remuneration packages will shrink by a third. The firm's 443 partners will receive a bonus of at least $1m (£650,000) apiece. It is equally tough all over the financial world. Average bonuses are expected to halve. Max Hastings Daily Mail
Full article: It defies belief that those who have brought disaster upon us are STILL given millions in bonuses...
Corporate hospitality
At what stage in the recession will it seem crass for Stephen Hester, the new RBS chief executive, to be seen gaily sipping champagne on the public account in a hospitality box at Twickenham during the Six Nations rugby championship? When he is forced to lay off 100 workers, 1,000, 10,000? Ashling O’Connor The Times
Full article: Bail out the banks and invest in sport
Portraiture, a redundant art
The question is not whether Jack Vettriano would have the depth and technique to paint Colin Montgomerie (and one doubts it), it is simply that in the power-joust of portraiture, in which the only true currency is flattery, these two men are not a good marriage. In the snakepit of celebrity portraiture, none of this is surprising. Painting pictures of people is a perverse act in the age of the camera, an irrational, indulgent art that doesn't need to exist. Melanie Reid The Times
Full article: The painting of portraits is a perverse act
People: Vettriano snubs golfer Montgomerie
Call centre hell
Vast corporations can spend billions on their image and on advertising their products but, rather than have to deal with humans in a normal way, they have created the call centre. Between the overpaid executive and the poor saps whose business pays his salary and bonus, there sits a man from Mumbai. No wonder if now and then, even he cracks and changes the identity of an English carpenter into that of a Ugandan, just for the hell of it. Terence Blacker The Independent
Full article: Driven to despair as I wander in the seventh circle of call-centre hell
Congo: five million dead
In 1994, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda by Hutus. Since then, the death toll in Congo from fighting and its consequences has been about five million. The enormity of the suffering is almost unimaginable. Leader Daily Telegraph
End Congo's suffering
The Congo crisis in pictures
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